A brilliantly perceptive and moving novel that announced Jonathan Franzen as one of our greatest living writers.
The Lamberts тАУ Enid, Alfred and their three grown-up children тАУ are a troubled family living in a troubled age. After fifty years as a wife and mother, Enid is ready to have some fun, but her husband Alfred is losing his mind to ParkinsonтАЩs. As his condition worsens, and the Lamberts are forced to face the long-buried secrets and failures that haunt them, Enid sets her heart on gathering everyone together for one last family Christmas.
тАШCompellingly readable, funny and above all generous spiritedтАЩ Daily Mail
тАШA novel of outstanding sympathy, wit, moral intelligence and pathos, a family saga told with stylistic brio and psychological and political insightтАЩ Financial Times
тАШA big-hearted, panoramic American epic, intelligent and wise but also wildly, stonkingly funnyтАЩ Independent
Jonathan Franzen was born in 1959 and graduated from Swarthmore College. He has lived in Boston, Spain, New York, Colorado Springs and Philadelphia. His previous novels are The Twenty-Seventh City (1988) and Strong Motion (1992). How to be Alone, a collection of FranzenтАЩs non fiction will be published in October 2002.